Turkmenistan votes for new leader

Turkmenistan held the first officially contested presidential elections in its history Sunday, conducting a carefully choreographed vote almost certain to be won by a confidante of the reclusive Central Asian country's late autocratic leader.

The election, organized by the tightly controlled state after Saparmurat Niyazov, the only president in the country's 15-year history, died in late December, was not formally monitored by international observers, who sent small teams of experts that were not expected to make any public statement about the government's conduct.

But the election was being closely followed by the West, Russia and China for signs of whether the anticipated result could be the start of changes in a country with gas reserves among the largest in the world. Any changes in its foreign and trade relations could have a deep significance for world energy markets, and especially for Russia and its gas monopoly, Gazprom, which relies in part on Turkmen natural gas to meet its obligations to customers.

Niyazov, who called himself Turkmenbashi, or Head of All Turkmen, led a bizarre personality cult and kept his country and its 5 million people isolated from the world.

Since his death, the country has been led by an acting president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, 49, a former deputy prime minister and health minister.

Under the Turkmen Constitution at the time of Niyazov's death, an acting president had been barred from running for the office. But the Constitution was amended to accommodate Berdymukhammedov's candidacy, a sign that analysts and diplomats said meant he was certain to win.

The initial reports of voter turnout, issued hours after polls closed at 4 p.m. indicated that nearly 99 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballots, a number so high that the opposition in exile said the vote had been flagrantly rigged to ensure an overwhelming victory for Berdymukhammedov, and to give his victory the patina of legality.

Under Turkmen electoral law, 50 percent of eligible voters must cast their ballots of an election to be valid.

Khudaiberdy Orazov, a former chairman of Turkmenistan's central bank who now lives in Sweden, said by telephone that the opposition's sources in Turkmenistan had reported only a small fraction of that vote. "Maybe 10 or 12 percent of the people who were eligible actually voted," he said.

Neither estimate could be independently confirmed, but one Western diplomat, who was reading the cables from Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital, also said by telephone that the official turnout was "implausible."

The Turkmen government said it expected to have official results early in the week, and would hold an inauguration Wednesday.

For Western countries, which have often been critical of rigged elections in post-Soviet states, the events unfolding in Turkmenistan were accompanied by a noticeable shift in diplomatic tactics.

The week after Niyazov died, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent condolences to Berdymukhammedov, and wrote of "turning a new page" in relations between the two states.

The United States has an embassy in Ashgabad, and has worked with Turkmenistan on counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and on humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. But profound differences remain between the United States and Turkmenistan, especially on human rights.

The country allows no public dissent, suppresses its media, has political prisoners and a clamp on Internet use. Only one political party is allowed. It was founded by Niyazov, who ruled his country with a sprawling security apparatus he inherited from the Soviet KGB.

During the brief period before election day, however, Berdymukhammedov, who has been largely out of sight, gave a speech saying he wanted to reform certain aspects of his predecessor's rule, including restoring banned subjects to school curriculums, allowing students to travel abroad, and creating universal access to the Internet. The International Herald Tribune